Traveler in Time
by J. Pickman
Summary: You can't lose a man like Doctor Emmett Brown for very long. You can't smash a DeLorean without people asking questions. Marty McFly is trying to bury his past, and his future, but the past won't stay dead, and the future is calling.
1. Chapter 1

Traveler in Time

Prologue

Some things can never stay hidden. Some things have a life of their own, a spirit of their own, and a will that touches the sleeping minds of a thousand inventors, and explorers, and dreamers. Ages pass, lives come and go, but sooner or later, the story begins again.

---

The wedding was beautiful.

The bride was resplendent in her white dress. Those who had never seen her in anything but jeans remarked on how radiant she looked, how perfectly beautiful and happy. The groom stood beside her, smiling thoughtfully. He looked somehow older. More patient. More still. Onlookers chalked it up to the smart tuxedo he wore, and the importance of the occasion.

The guests numbered over a hundred, some of them close family, others unknown relations who had somehow managed to get an invitation. The champagne flowed like water, or rather like champagne, which is much more popular than water under any circumstances. For this reason, the family of the groom, who had paid for the affair, had also hired inconspicuous young men with wheelbarrows to help remove besotted partygoers. There was food, and chocolate, and several kinds of cake. A live band played hits from the sixties, seventies, and eighties, and a few people were already dancing.

From his seat in the back, far away from the bustle of the reception, George McFly watched his son send his daughter-in-law across the dancefloor. He turned to his wife and smiled ruefully. The song being played was 'Johnny B. Goode'.

"I remember," Lorraine said. "When you and I danced to that."

"We did?"

"Don't _you_ remember? The night we first kissed? That strange Klein boy was playing it on stage. Or something like it."

"That's _right_." George snapped his fingers. "The Fish Under the Sea Dance. Can't believe I forgot that."

"_Enchantment_ Under the Sea. And I can't believe you did, either. How many times do you get to kiss the girl of your dreams and punch out the school bully, all in one night?" She chucked him playfully under the chin. "Bet you didn't forget _that_ part."

"What, Biff? Ah, he was harmless. Just needed someone to stand up to him."

"That's what I love about you, dear. You always see the best in people."

"Easy for me.. I always see the best people." He kissed her. "I'm glad I got to kiss you...and...punching Biff was a nice perk, too."

"Some things are just meant to be."

"I am your density." George looked thoughtful. "Guess he was right."

"Who?"

"Klein. He told me you were my destiny. That's why I talked to you in the first place. That and this really _weird _dream..."

"What was it about?"

"It's not important."

They watched their son dance.

"He looks older," Lorraine said. "More mature, I mean."

George nodded. "I think he's finally grown up."

"Finally?"

"Well..." They both looked over at the champagne table, where Biff Tannen was talking at a young woman. He was listing noticebly to port.

"...I think it takes some people a while."

The couple danced and spun and kissed like only young lovers can...and in the darkness behind the stage, a silent figure watched, and waited.


	2. Chapter 2

Part One

The Shapes of Things To Come

Chapter One

---

"_Tiii-iii-iiime...is on my side...yes it is_."

The band crooned the old Rolling Stones song with somewhat more harmony than its original creators. A few resolute couples were revolving on the dance floor, but for the most part, the guests had returned to their tables to nibble at cheese and refill their cups of wine and rum punch. After a day of pageantry and a night of wildness, the party was finally, slowly, winding down.

Marty McFly took off his bowtie and loosened his collar. He sat back in his seat and put an arm around Jennifer. She snuggled up against him and nibbled playfully at his ear, making him laugh. She had to push aside his hair to do that, now. Marty was getting a little shaggy.

Her lover was older than he had been when she first fell in love with him. There were more lines in his face. More care in his eyes. He was kind, and thoughtful, and he treated her like an equal, a friend and confidant- not a subordinate 'wife'. But sometimes she missed the old Marty.

"Pretty crazy stuff, huh?" He said to her. "The whole wedding thing."

She nodded. "Feels like we just graduated."

"You don't regret doing it, do you?"

"Are you kidding?" She sat up in her chair until she was level with his eyes. "Marty, I'm so crazy about you, if you hadn't asked me to marry you, I would have knocked you down and sat on you until you did."

"Oh yeah?" He grinned, and some of the old Marty came through. "You can sit on me anytime you like."

She slapped him on the shoulder. "Dirty."

"That's me."

"Seriously, though. Are you completely okay with this?"

He picked up his glass of champagne and sipped at it. "I think so, yeah. I don't mean I want to settle down, do the whole house-kids-steady job gig, but I want to spend my life with you. Think you can deal with someone as crazy as me for that long?"

"You'd better believe it. And a good thing, too. Do you know you sound like Doctor Brown sometimes?"

"Yeah..." Marty ran a hand through his hair. "I miss him."

"I know."

"...anyway," He shook himself visibly out of the thought. "What do you think about the hair?"

She drew her fingers through it. "Mm. Going to take some getting used to. How long are you going to keep it?"

"I don't know yet. I think I'll just let it grow and go from there." He blinked. "Jennifer, what's wrong?"

She was looking over his shoulder. "Marty, there's a man staring at you."

"_You always say...that you want to be free..._"

He turned. Behind him, standing still as a statue amid the crowd, was a tall, wiry man in spectacles and tuxedo. His frizzy brown hair flowed every which way, and probably would have fallen to his shoulders, had it been inclined to lay flat, which it wasn't. The man had a sallow complexion and deep, sunken cheeks. He might have been as young as Marty, or as much as ten years older. His features were bony, his nose was large and hawkish.

"Do you know him?"

Marty shook his head. "No. You?"

"No." She looked back at the man, whose eerie, unblinking gaze hadn't wavered from Marty. "What are you going to do?"

"Go talk to him, I guess." He stood up.

"Marty..."

Marty turned, and put his hand in hers. "We're in the middle of a party. If he wants to make trouble he's at least going to wait until we leave. I'll be okay."

He turned away from her, and threaded his way through the party, until he stood in front of the man.

"All right. What?"

Marty decided he was looking at a young man after all, only one weighted down by unknown concerns. There were dark circles under his blue bombardier's eyes.

"Are you Martin McFly?"

"Who wants to know?"

"You are, aren't you?"

Marty stuck his hands in his pockets. "Sure. What do you want?"

"You're a friend of Doctor Emmett Brown, yes?"

"I knew him, yeah. Look, man-"

"Have you seen him recently?"

"Uh, no, not really." He didn't like the way the conversation was going.

"Not really, or not at all?"

"Not at all. I haven't seen him in a couple of years. I heard he got into some trouble with terrorists a while back."

"So I have heard." The man cocked his head. "So you would swear you have neither seen or heard anything from Doctor Brown since 1985?"

"Yeah, sure."

"I don't believe you, Mr. McFly."

"Look, I don't know who you are, but I bet you didn't get invited to this party, so either you can start explaining what you're doing here, and why you're grilling me about some crazy scientist I haven't seen in years, or you can make like a-"

"My name is David Brown," said the man. "My father is Alexander Brown. My uncle is Doctor Emmett Brown."

"Oh..." Marty felt the world tilting around him. "I didn't know the Doc had a brother."

"Had is the appropriate word."

"What?"

"That's why I'm here, Mr. McFly. That's why I want to know about Doctor Brown. I've come here to tell him that his brother is dead."


	3. Chapter 3

Traveller in Time

Part One: The Shapes of Things to Come

Chapter Two

"Jesus." Marty ran a hand through his hair. "I didn't know the Doc had a brother."

"He does. Or did." David Brown looked him evenly in the eye. "Now, I'm passing along this information for a good reason."

"What reason?"

"I would like to talk to you about it...but not here in front of everybody. Is there somewhere we can go?"  
"Uh. Yeah, sure. Hold on." Marty turned around to Jennifer. "You going to be okay for a second."

She nodded. "Go see what he wants."

Marty turned to leave. She grabbed his sleeve.

"Be careful."

Marty half-smiled. "You know me."

"That's why I said be careful." She let go of him.

---

"Okay, what's this all about?"

They were standing in the empty foyer, just on the other side of the banquet hall. Muffled chatter drifted occasionally down the corridor, like the ghosts of parties past. David Brown stood under one of the overhead flourescents, which turned his pale skin sallow and unhealthy looking. Marty was reminded of how George McFly had looked back in 1955, pale and tired and somehow raw, like the top three layers of skin had been scraped right off.

"When I asked you earlier, you told me you hadn't heard anything from Doctor Emmett Brown since 1985. Do you still say so?"

"Yeah. Why?"

David Brown fixed him with his unblinking stare. "What about a DeLorean? Do you know anything about a DeLorean that Doctor Brown may have owned or had something to do with."

Marty shrugged. "Not really."

"Meaning 'no'?"

"Meaning no."

"I see." David said nothing, but kept looking at him. There was something profoundly unsettling in his gaze. Marty forced himself not to look away.

"So what?" he said at last. "You still haven't told me what this is all about?"

David Brown seemed to prepare himself for something. "Well..." He looked away. Looked back. "I should first tell you that I have done a bit of research. As you may or may not know, a DeLorean was destroyed on the train tracks in Hill Valley around 1985. Terrible car accident. No casualties."

"Okay..."

"Police reports indicated bystanders saw you in the general area around the time of the accident."

Marty blinked. "Oh, I think I remember that. I went for a walk with Jennifer that day. There was a bunch of rubble on the track."

"The remains of a DeLorean," David said. "Apparently, one with more than a few modifications. Of an odd and unrecognizable type. According to reports, police found the remains of some unknown electric-powered mechanism amidst the wreckage, as well as...as well as a device which bore the name of...um...Mister Fusion."

"Mr. Fusion? Like Mr. Coffee?"

"I suppose so."

Marty looked around. They were alone in the corridor. "Okay. What does this have to do with me?"

"Did you know that some of the bystanders claimed to have seen someone by your description IN the car- actually DRIVING the car- before it was hit by the train?"

"Uh, no..."

"How about Biff Tannen?"

Marty started as if shot. "What?"

"Your father's mechanic friend, Biff. Did you know he filed a police report, too?"

"No. Did something happen to him?"

"You could say that. After Doctor Brown was reported missing, he claimed to have seen him- and you- climb into...well...a DeLorean...which then- these are HIS words- flew into the sky and disappeared in a flash of light."

Cold sweat broke out on Marty's forehead. "Heh. Well, Biff's always been a bit of a drinker, and-"

"Of course, he was laughed out of the station. But that's what he said. So I went and asked him myself. He told me the whole story, and something even stranger..."

"Stranger than a flying DeLorean?"

"Yes." Brown stepped in close. "Okay, listen. This doesn't make any sense to me, but...my father always believed in strange occurrences, and I can't bring myself to think this doesn't have something to do with everything that's happened. You see, when I spoke to Mr. Tannen, he told me...he told me he had seen a DeLorean before, when he was a teenager. He told me a young man named Calvin Klein- like the clothes- had assaulted him and stolen something valuable to him. He didn't say what. He ALSO said he man was using some kind of skateboard without wheels, and that he looked- upon reflection- almost exactly like you."

There was a long, drawn-out silence in the corridor.

"So," David said. "You want to tell me about any of that?"

Marty shrugged. "Like I said, Biff's a drunk, and he likes to tell stories, and, well..." He twirled a finger around his ear. "He's always been a little off, if you know what I mean."

"Sure. Right."

"Right..."

They looked at each other.

"Mr. McFly," David said at last. "I'm not an idiot. You're lying, probably, or at least not telling me everything. Either way, I want to know, and as Doctor Brown is my uncle, I think I deserve to know if he is still alive- and he deserves to know his brother has died. Or don't you think so."

Marty looked back down the corridor. He ran a hand through his hair. He looked back at David Brown.

"This," Marty said. "THIS...is heavy."


	4. Chapter 4

Traveller in Time

Chapter One

Part Three

---

"All right," Marty said. "All right. Sit down. Trust me, you're going to want to."

David Brown lowered himself into one of the plastic chairs that lined the foyer.

"This is going to sound crazy," Marty said. "But bear with me here. Did you know your uncle well?"

David shrugged. "Well enough."

"You know about his inventions, then?"

"Sure. He had a lot of ideas about how things were supposed to work. Most of them didn't come across."

"Yeah. Well...one of them did."

"Which one."

Marty steeled himself. "Well...you're not going to believe this...but Doc Brown built a time machine."

"I see."

"You don't believe me?"

"I haven't decided yet, Mr. McFly. Keep talking."

"Call me Marty."

"Okay, Marty. So my uncle built a time machine."

Marty nodded. "Yeah. He built it out of a DeLorean. The same one the police found on the railroad tracks. He installed some kind of machine called a flux capacitor, fitted it out with a bunch of stuff. Look, I thought it was insane myself, but it _works._ Oh, believe me, it works."

"You used it." It was not a question.

"Several times. The first time was when Doc first showed it to me. The terrorists you were talking about showed up. Doc got shot, and I drove away, and...well...you see where this is going."

"You went back in time?"

"To 1955."

David put a hand to his head. "It all makes sense now."

"What does?"

The sallow young man turned to regard him. "When Biff told me about his encounter with Calvin Klein, I went looking through the archives, and found _this_." He took a folded-up piece of paper from his back pocket and handed it to Marty.

Marty unfolded it. On it was a photocopied section of newspaper. The heading read: HILL VALLEY STUDENT ENTERTAINS AT PROM. The photo above the caption was instantly recognizable. There he was, guitar in hand, no doubt in the act of performing his interpretation of Johnny B. Goode in front of an auditorium full of dazed high school seniors.

"That was when I decided to come looking for you," David said. "This Calvin Klein, he doesn't just look a lot like you. He looks _exactly_ like you."

"Yeah..."

"It's you, isn't it?"

Marty sighed. "Yeah. I went back in time and almost screwed things up. I had to make sure my mother and father fell in love. The song was...uh...sort of related to that."

"Then it's all true?"

Marty looked at the pale, bookish figure in front of him. "All of it."

"My uncle really did invent a time machine..."

"Did, and used it. We went to the future, too. THAT was weird..."

"But it got destroyed..."

"Yeah. It's the way Doc wanted it. He got stuck in the Old West, but built another one out of a train. He came back to tell me just after the train hit the DeLorean."

"Good Lord..."

"You mean 'Great Scott'."

"What?"

"Nothing." Marty stood up. "Look. I'm counting on you to keep this secret. The Doc and I worked really hard to keep it from becoming known, and...well...it didn't entirely work...but I hope you understand why we have to keep the secret. The machine's already fallen into the wrong hands- Biff's- once, and I don't even want to guess what some people would do if they had their own time machine, or knew one could be made.

David Brown nodded solemnly. "I understand."

"You promise to keep our secret?"

"I promise." David paused. "Does your wife know as well?"

"Jennifer? Yeah, she knows. She was involved, sort of. I'll get to that later. Look, hang around here, and meet me when the whole thing ends. We have a lot to talk about, and I have a few things to show you."

David nodded. He stood up. "Until then," he said, and walked away.

Marty sighed. "Doc's going to kill me..."


	5. Chapter 5

Traveller in Time

Part One

Chapter Four

---

Brown was waiting just outside the door, minus coat and bowtie, looking rumpled and a little more human. Marty and Jennifer nodded to him as they passed into the parking lot, and he followed them to their truck.

"You'll have to ride in back," Marty said. "Hope you don't mind."

David shrugged. "The night is warm."

Marty and Jennifer climbed into the cab and waited until their passenger was well-seated in the back before pulling out into the road.

Neither of them said anything for a couple minutes. Jennifer looked out the window at the passing darkness. She looked at the road, then down at her dress, then quickly out at Brown, who was staring down the receding highway with a look of distant concentration in his eyes.

Finally, she said: "I can't believe you told him."

"Jennifer-"

"After everything you and Doctor Brown kept saying about keeping secrets and power in the wrong hands and- and all of that. You just told him."

"Jennifer-"

"I mean, I know he's his nephew and all, but that doesn't mean he should-"

"He would have found out eventually."

She stared at him, surprised. "He would've?"

"Yeah, probably. Jennifer, he had a _picture_ of me. You know, when I was doing my rock thing back in 1955?"

"How did he-?"

"Went through the newspapers and found it. He knew something was up."

"He creeps me out."

"So did the Doc when you first met him."

"Well...yeah...he's still weird."

"Yeah, he always was. I swear he's getting weirder every time he comes back." Marty ran a hand through his hair. "I don't know. Maybe there's something about time travel that turns you a little strange." He stopped for a red light and turned to Jennifer. "Do you think I'm stranger than before...you know...?"

"Honestly?"

"Honestly."

She nodded. "Yeah, you're a lot different. I mean, you've changed a lot since you got back, too. But it's more than that. Did I tell you that you talk in your sleep?"

"Yeah, you make me roll over and shut up sometimes."

"I hear you talking to people who aren't there. People you told me about from the past. You said something to Seamus last night. Something about a hat. Marty, some of those people have been dead for years, since before you were BORN. It's-"

"Weird?"

"I guess so." She looked out the window again. "Sometimes, late at night, I hear you talking to these people, and I feel...I don't know...disconnected. Lost in time. Sometimes I have to get up and walk around the apartment, just to be sure I'm still in the right time."

"Is that why you started leaving the TV on at night?"

"Yeah. I mean, things were pretty good these past few weeks, but now-" She looked back out at Brown. "Now he comes out of nowhere, actually gets you to TALK to him about what happened in 1985. Are you going to take him to meet Doctor Brown?"

"If anyone will know what to do now, it'll be him. Anyway, I feel like I have to after everything I've told him."

"What happens then?"

Marty shook his head. "I don't know."

"This IS our wedding night, you know."

"I know." He leaned over and kissed her. "I'll make sure he stays at a hotel."

"You better..."

They pulled into the apartment parking lot.


End file.
